


with a weight upon my chest (and a ghost upon my back)

by Nazezdha321



Series: Character Studies (sort of) [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Character Study, Life Model Decoys, So much angst, The Framework Universe (Marvel), Weird Dream Things, death because that's literally the premise of this fic, vi i hope you're happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27871625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nazezdha321/pseuds/Nazezdha321
Summary: "They think she doesn’t remember it.The gut-wrenching pain of the sword through her body, pain no worse than the pain in her heart. Love, she supposed. If love was being stabbed with a blade by the person you once called your partner."or, every time Melinda May died, and the ghosts that haunt her still.
Relationships: Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson/Melinda May
Series: Character Studies (sort of) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817902
Comments: 25
Kudos: 36





	with a weight upon my chest (and a ghost upon my back)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadtunes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadtunes/gifts).



> normally i address her as may in my fics, but melinda felt right this time. 
> 
> happy birthday vivi, you’re the sweetest and i love you even though you break my heart with your angst <3
> 
> enjoy!!

Dusty files and old mission reports have a way of bringing back memories. Melinda knows this. It’s part of why she came - because she got so scared, seeing her team sitting and laughing as they drank together and told stories. She realized that one day, she’ll have forgotten this. She’ll have forgotten  _ them _ . 

The good times, the good people. Melinda is clinging to them like a child, even though she knows not to get attached. She knows how that ends. 

She knows all of this, and more, but she can’t help it. It’s human nature and Melinda might seem robotic sometimes, but she’s human. She’s more human than they’ll ever think she is. 

Her fingertips drift across folders neatly stacked in file cabinets until she finally picks up one. 

She has to brush off the dust before she can really read it. When she can, she can’t help but notice the irony. It’s five years' worth of transfer requests approved by the office of Maria Hill, from 2005-2010. 

Melinda knows she shouldn’t, but she finds herself looking for hers.

The black text has faded slightly. It must be a copy. Phil’s copy or Maria’s copy, probably. Regardless of how many copies were made, she’s glad she’ll never have to look at the one she held in her scarred hands, hugging it to her chest all those years ago like a promise, or maybe a prayer. 

Melinda’s fingertips brush the side of the paper and she’s surprised by how much dust is collected by the sliver of the edge. How much time has truly passed, that so much history can be built up along the edge of a piece of paper? 

_ (It’s been so, so long. _

_ So long that her team thinks she doesn’t remember.  _

_ But she does).  _

\--- 

She remembers the way her hand curled around the gun behind her back. The metal was cool against her fingers. Her hands never slipped, not when she picked it off the floor, not when her fingers found the trigger, not when she pulled it. 

She remembers the little girl’s eyes, those dark, cruel eyes. There was an innocent, almost curious look on her face but those eyes told a different story. She remembers looking into those eyes and feeling her spine crawl and her hands curl into fists. 

She remembers the recoil, not bothering to absorb it like she’d learned, instead leaning into it and letting it pass through her body. She remembers collapsing onto the ground like the girl beside her had and staring into those eyes. She didn’t look like she did before. She looked - _betrayed, horrified_ \- scared. 

She remembers her legs being too stiff to move while her body shook. She remembers dropping the gun. She remembers taking the girl’s hand in her own and pulling her close as she struggled to sit up. 

She remembers staring at the shattered glass and the unconscious men she had saved and the corpses of the men she hadn’t. She remembers telling that little girl to  _ let them go  _ and she remembers Phil tell her to  _ let the girl go  _ and she remembers all she could think about was the name ringing her head. 

The Cavalry, the Cavalry, the Cavalry. 

_ (She remembers the fabric of the girl’s shirt against her skin.  _

_ She remembers the fabric of Phil’s coat as it soaked up her tears. She remembers crying and wondering what she had to cry for. She remembers realizing that it was grief. For the girl. For herself. _

_ Because most of all, she remembers that it was the first time Melinda May died.  _

_ And it wouldn’t be the last).  _

\--- 

They think she doesn’t remember the next time she died. 

They think she doesn’t remember seeing the darkness creep around their eyes. Watching the people she loved turn into monsters. Knowing logically that something had to be wrong, but everything in her mind going haywire the second she saw them. 

That kind of fear invokes a fight-or-flight instinct where logic doesn’t apply. Melinda has always been a fighter but at that moment she wanted nothing more than to run away. To run somewhere they could never find her and hug her knees close to her chest and disappear. 

But she couldn’t do that, no matter how much she wanted to at the moment, so she fought them. Her team. She fought her team. 

Melinda knew afterward that there weren’t any serious injuries, just a few bruises here and there, but she couldn’t but feel responsible. 

She thinks about the sudden coldness of the room, the way her arms were strapped to her body on the Quinjet, how her own screams sounded in her ears. She thinks about dying,  _ really dying,  _ and for someone who has eluded it all these years, she can’t help but feel powerless. 

Melinda still dreams about it. About going to that place, when she knew she was gone. 

_ You have to go now,  _ dream-Phil tells her, after telling her that she’s died.  _ They still need you.  _

_ But I don’t want to leave _ , dream-Melinda says to him. She remembers hugging her best friend until she’s ripped away from him until it’s all heartbeats and cold hands and metal against her skin. Until her eyes flutter open and Jemma’s tears fall onto her face. 

“Welcome back, Agent May,” Jemma says, her face breaking into a smile. 

(You promised me, _dream-Phil says to her._ You promised me that if we died, we died together _._

_ And she had made that promise, so long ago, on the roof of the Academy the night before being sent out to her first op. They crossed their hearts and pinky-swore and promised up and down that neither one would leave the other behind like that.  _

You died first, _ dream-Melinda whispers).  _

\--- 

They think she doesn’t remember her LMD self. And they’re right. 

She doesn’t remember that Melinda. Melinda who was forward. Melinda who was open and smiling and trusting. Melinda who held a gun to Phil’s head. 

She still thinks about her, though, late at night when she walks the hallways of the base like a ghost. That Melinda was more like Melinda before Bahrain. That Melinda is a phantom of the past but this Melinda can’t help but feel like the phantom. 

She thinks about the smell of ash and the fire surrounding her. She thinks about alcohol on her breath and a smile on her lips. She thinks about love, the love that LMD Melinda felt, not just for Phil, but for Daisy and Jemma. 

How could any of that be fake? 

But she isn’t the only other version of Melinda, and the Framework version is the version that hurts the most. The version where she completed the mission, saved the girl. The version where she did everything right and it still went wrong. A Melinda without Phil, and Daisy, and Bobbi and Hunter and FitzSimmons and Mack and Yo-Yo. 

A Melinda who worked for HYDRA, the very organization that killed so many of her friends and fellow agents. 

A Melinda who held dragged a sobbing little girl away from her father and blackmailed him to give up Daisy. A Melinda who lashed out and hurt people,  _ innocent people.  _ A Melinda who indirectly murdered Jeffrey Mace. 

A monster. 

Maybe they’re all monsters, she thinks numbly as she walks up and down the halls at the Lighthouse. It could be in the same hall, or it could be different ones. They all look the same to her. 

After weeks of wandering, when she can finally rest, she closes her eyes and tries not to let thoughts come to her in the dark. 

_ (She thinks she hears the hangar doors open and the feel of a detonator beneath her thumb.  _

_ She thinks she’s afraid to die, but you can’t be brave if you have no fear. _

_ And then there’s simply -  _

_ nothing at all).  _

\---

They think she doesn’t remember it. 

The gut-wrenching pain of the sword through her body, pain no worse than the pain in her heart. Love, she supposed. If love was being stabbed with a blade by the person you once called your partner. 

She grasped the sword almost instinctively, felt the blood on her fingertips. Felt the pain, but any other pain than the pain in her stomach was welcome. 

She remembers thinking about her team - they’d be devastated, and this was  _ exactly  _ what she taught them not to do. Do not make yourself vulnerable to the enemy. 

But then, Melinda also remembers looking into his eyes and seeing Phil. Not the enemy, not Sarge. Just Phil. They say eyes are windows to the soul, and if that’s true then it was Phil’s soul inside that body. 

She was a fool to think she could save him. She shouldn’t have tried, even got her hopes up, because better not have any hope than to have fostered it, nurtured for this long, and be forced to watch it wither. 

But she’s always saved him. Or he’s saved her. They save each other, every single time. 

_ (Not this time).  _

\--- 

They know she remembers this part. The part where she fell, after throwing Mack the sword. The part where she didn’t get up. The part where Izel didn’t either, so maybe it was worth it. The part where Daisy pulled her close like Melinda pulled Kayta close and tried not to cry, and then ‘worth it’ was irrelevant. 

Try all she did, Melinda remembers Daisy crying, her tears slipping down her cheeks and onto Melinda’s, the same way Jemma’s did not so long ago. Melinda wanted to cry, too, but she struggled to breathe, much less allow tears to slip from her eyes. 

She felt dirt against her back. She always liked dirt - she liked to play in it when she was little, and she liked that usually, the dirtier you were after a mission, the more successful you were - until she had to bury Phil’s body in it. 

Melinda remembers wishing that she’d told Daisy she loved her. She thought she had just another few seconds, but all she could see was the blinding light above her and the shadow of a person in it. 

daisyiloveyoudaisyiloveyoudaisyiloveyou - 

(I have to go back, don’t I? _dream-Melinda asks._

Don’t you want to?  _ dream-Phil replies.  _

_ Dream-Melinda smiles a little sadly.  _ They need me. 

_ Dream-Phil smiles back.  _

How long?  _ dream-Melinda asks as she feels herself start to slip away.  _ Until I see you again? 

Try not to live your life waiting to die _ , dream-Phil advises).  _

\--- 

“May?” 

Melinda turns around. It’s Daisy, standing in the doorway. “Daisy.” 

“Everyone’s waiting for you,” she says. 

Melinda smiles slightly. She puts the transcript in its folder and the folder back in the file cabinet. “

“What was that?” Daisy asks as they walk down the corridor.

She shrugs. “Nothing important.” 

You have to let some memories go, after all. 

_ (And you have to let the girl go, too).  _

**Author's Note:**

> for someone like may, who wallows in her guilt and regret, it seems fitting to me that she would fear forgetting. anyway, i hope you liked it!! comments and kudos are the best and you can find me on tumblr under the same username, where i spam vi with happy birthday asks <3


End file.
